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Some Aspects of the Population Dynamics of Asterina Gibbosa (Asteroidea)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2009

R. G. Crump  and
R. H. Emson
R. G. Crump
Affiliation:
Orielton Field Centre, Pembroke, Dyfed
R. H. Emson
Affiliation:
Department of Zoology, King's College, Strand, London WCR LS
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Extract

Very few field studies of the population dynamics of starfish have been undertaken; such work depends upon being able to age individuals and identify age classes in the field. Information regarding growth rates in asteroids is notoriously difficult to obtain, due primarily to the absence of any method of assessing age, except where clear and obvious recruitment and regular growth provide size/age relationships. Numerous investigations of skeletal structures in asteroids by Smith (1940), Feder (1956), Hatanaka & Kosaka (1959) and Crump (1971) have failed to reveal any trace of growth lines similar to those found by Moore (1935), Jensen (1969) and Ebert (1970) in echinoids. In forcipulate asteroids, it is well established that growth depends primarily on temperature (Vevers, 1949; Hancock, 1958) and the availability of suitable food supplies (Mead, 1900; Galtsoff & Loosanoff, 1939; Smith, 1940; Vevers, 1949; Feder, 1956, 1970; Hancock, 1958). The food availability factor acts in such a way that it is impossible to tell the age of an adult starfish from its size; for example, in the spinulosan asteroid Patiriella regularts (Verrill), Crump (1969) found that specimens kept without food for 44 weeks lost 33 % of the original body weight, whilst P. regularts which had been fed on freshly killed crabs, showed a mean net increase of 629% of the original net weight over the same period.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom , Volume 58 , Issue 2 , May 1978 , pp. 451 - 466
Copyright
Copyright © Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom 1978

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